Tag: garden wildlife

A lottie visit.

It seems a long while since I featured our allotment plot in Greenbenchramblings and it was from the old green bench on the lottie that my blog was launched, so when I was nominated for a pair of blogging awards I thought it would be a good time to say thank you by taking you for a quick look around our plot.

Firstly thanks to aristonorganic for the 2Awards in 1! I am not a competitive person but I do feel privileged to know that someone appreciates my blog. It brings a smile to my face.

The awards are “Shine On” and “Very Inspiring Blogger Award”.

By accepting them I promise to tell you 7 things about myself and pass on the nomination to other bloggers I enjoy reading.

7 Things About Me

1 I am registered “Bionic”.

2 I want to know what is going on in our garden at night so have just got a live moth trap.

3 I keep a flock of hens at the bottom of my garden and talk to them regularly. I think they talk back!

4 I enjoy our monthly trip to jazz club.

5 I garden with wildlife in mind.

6 I am chairman of our allotment community.

7 I enjoy watching 20/20 cricket.

Bloggers who I wish to nominate are

mybeautifulthings

The Scottish Country Garden

lensandpensbysally

Penny’s Garden

grandparentsplus2

Catherine Howard’s Garden

pbmgarden

So let us go for a wander around our lottie plot. We welcome you through an archway where a “meeter-greeter” awaits your arrival.

Fruit grown as cordons line our paths and here red currants, almost ready to pick, are netted against the attentions of the local blackbird population. We grow flowers with our fruit to bring in beneficial insects which act as pest controllers and pollinators.

Our Runner Beans are in flower providing bright splashes of red whilst below them French Beans give us purples and mauves to enjoy.

We grow Sweetcorn and Courgette together as they are good companions. The large leaves of the Courgettes provide ground cover holding moisture in the soil and creating a cool root run for the corn. Of course it saves space too!

We welcome wildlife onto our plot to benefit us as gardeners and for us to enjoy watching and listening to. Our little pool is alongside our seats. We have little insect hotels dotted around to help us keep our crops healthy and free of pests.

We have a couple of wildflower strips to help our Brassica crops and Blackcurrants.

A barrier of fleece keeps Carrot rows free from the attentions of Carrot Rootfly and the flowers of Heartsease bring in beneficial insects. Growing members of the Allium family close by also helps fool them by emitting strong scents to mask the sweet aroma of Carrots.

You may remember me telling you about making our green roof atop our shed in a post a few months ago and as you can see it is slowly getting established. On the communal spaces near our plot we have at last got the willow dome complete. It has grown enough to train growth over to form a full roof. It is lovely and quiet, cool and shaded in there and it is a popular place for children to sit and read or to look through the woven window and watch the birds on the feeders. We hold our open day at the allotments this weekend, when we open for charity, under the auspices of the NGS, so we can proudly call ourselves a “Yellow Book Garden”.

Tags allotments, community gardening, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, fruit., garden wildlife, gardening, grown your own, insects, NGS, organic gardening

bird watching birds garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening natural pest control photography Shropshire shrubs village gardens wildlife

Summer house revamp

After ten years our summer-house, our little quiet place of escape at the bottom of the garden, was beginning to look worse for wear. The back wall faces directly south so gets harsh sun on it in the summer months and as our garden is at the bottom of a hill temperature inversion in the winter means that the poor summer-house feels the full effect of the cold frosty air as it rolls down the hill to hit our summer-house first. The first two pics show the summer-house as we began work, with the original interior on the left and the first stages of cladding the walls on the right.

We decided to re-clad it inside and out and then repaint both the inside and outside. A job that ended up taking us a long time as we fitted it in between more interesting gardening tasks.
But at last we have finished! A big sigh of relief can be heard all over the garden!

So, first let us share with you what it looks like now.

The summer-house is our little secret place where we hide at the bottom of the garden and ignore the telephone and doorbell, pretend that television and computers don’t exist and believe there is no lane passing our house.

It catches the evening sun in the last few hours before it sets, so is a great place to end the day. We sit and listen and we can appreciate a different view of our garden. We listen to the calls and songs of our garden birds and those passing over our heads. We can share the intimacy of their bathing as they come to freshen up in the shallow end of our wildlife pool. A square of decking sits in front of the summer-house and hangs over the pool.

Please share the view from our summer-house seat.

To give you an idea of some of the special things we can see right now from our little house I have taken a few shots with a long zoom on my camera.

As we enjoyed a coffee in the summer house today, a female blackbird came to bathe almost splashing our feet. She must have been enjoying a few moments off the nest, a few moments to herself. A house sparrow also came to bathe when the blackbird returned to the nest. On the nearby bird feeders a nuthatch noisily bashed away at the peanuts with its long powerful beak and took small bits back to its young in a hole in a nearby tree. It soon returned for more and we heard its beak tapping on the metal mesh of the feeder.

A blue tit couple are rearing young in a nest box fixed to the summer-house and we watched as they appeared with beaks full of wriggling caterpillars. We could hear the fledglings begging as they open their yellow wide gapes to beg for their share of the wrigglers.

In the pond itself life lives on the film of water and secretly below the surface. Pond skaters dominate the surface but they are frequently joined by sub-surface dwellers in need of a gulp of air, newts, water boatmen and water beetles. Below the surface we can watch tadpoles of frogs and toads feeding and fattening themselves up.

The pond is home to many of our pest controllers such as newts, toads and frogs who all breed here at our feet.

But as we look out and appreciate our garden and its life, one nosey bird looks in to see what we are up to. A robin comes close, perches on the nearby malus and watches us with head cocked to one side as if bemused.

As we rest in our little summer-house world the garden and its wildlife busily carry on close by.

Tags birds, garden buildings, garden photography, garden pond, garden wildlife, gardening, organic gardening, pond, summer-house, wildlife, wildlife ponds

colours flowering bulbs fruit and veg garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening grasses hardy perennials Land Art ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture photography Shropshire shrubs spring bulbs spring gardening wildlife

A Bouquet for April

At last spring has arrived in the garden and taken it by storm. Buds are bursting, birds are nesting and bees buzzing searching the blooms.

Any bouquet for April will have to embrace flowering bulbs.

And how about adding a few bursting buds of trees and shrubs? Our miniature chestnut, the sweetly scented daphne flowers and the froth of snow-white amelanchier flowers.

All around the garden fresh fruit blossom promise beautifully scented and delicious, delicate flavours. The pinks of apple blossom and whites of plums. Oh so tasty!

The insects are appreciating these new signs of life too, in particular the bees and butterflies. This little bee knows that there is something good awaiting him inside the tulip once it opens. He is just a centimetre or so long and coloured a rich gingery orange.

I shall finish off by inviting you to enjoy a little gallery of garden delights taken on the last day of April.

Dusky pink primula hides in arum and stipa leaves.

Copper sculpture with copper leaved phormium.

Kingcups on the dge of the wildlife pond.

Tags amelanchier, apples, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit blossom, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grasses, insects, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, sculpture, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden

allotments birds garden wildlife gardening natural pest control succulents Uncategorized wildlife

Growing up! Making a green roof.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 29, 2013
10 Comments on Growing up! Making a green roof.

We have created a new feature on our allotment this week – a green roof. We thought we would try to make up for the area of ground taken up by the footprint of our shed by making a garden on its roof. We have spent months at the planning stage, working out how to strengthen the roof, how to make sure we could still collect rain water run-off to fill our butts and choosing plants that would look good and support wildlife. We would like the roof to entice more beneficial insects , pollinators and natural pest controllers to visit our plot. Spiders, beetles, hoverflies will also be welcomed as our little garden helpers and of course we want to attract butterflies too just to delight in watching them.

After strengthening the structure of the shed by building an internal framework of 2 x 2 inch lengths of wood, we added a second layer of roofing felt. Next we fitted the outside frame out of 6 inch deep feather edge and inside this stapled down a double layer of geo-textile membrane. We hope the membrane will allow rainwater to pass through it after permeating through the compost. The rainwater will then be caught in the guttering and can run into the butts.

A structure of 2 x 2 inch lengths of wood was used to divide up the surface.

We next added the first layer of special compost to a depth of about an inch. This is a lightweight compost to which we added perlite to a ratio of 1 to 3 perlite to compost. Chicken wire was then laid over this first layer of compost and then a second one inch layer of our compost/perlite mixture was added. The wire should help hold the compost in place in times of heavy rain and we hope it will also give something for the roots to grow through and grip onto.

Finally the planting. Delicate alpines in some sections and mixed sedum and sempervivum in others. We added a driftwood feature for interest.

What we hope we have created is a little meadow in the air, a miniature garden that takes up no growing space that could otherwise be used for crop production. We will have the added benefit of an increase in insulation, giving us a cooler shed in the summer and a warmer space in the winter.

So now we are keeping our fingers crossed, hoping that we do not have any heavy downpours before the plants get their roots down, and hoping that Blackbirds do not find a way in. They have a habit of uprooting young plants in the hope of finding a tasty morsel.

I shall keep you informed of progress.

Tags allotments, birds, garden wildlife, gardening, organic gardening, roof gardening, roof gardens

bird watching birds garden photography garden wildlife natural pest control wildlife

Home Search

There seem to be too many members of the titmice family around this year looking for suitable nesting sites. All our nest boxes are occupied and being fought after. This little chap, a young male Great Tit is using his imagination and setting up home in one of our terracotta pots at ground level in the Beth Chatto Border, our gravel garden. He is just a few feet from our study window so is entertaining us as we work on the computer.

His family will provide us with natural pest control in return for our hospitality. Feeding a couple of nests of fledglings will dispose of thousands of aphids and caterpillars.

He is such a star we thought he deserved a little photo gallery all of his own. Just click on any pic.

Tags birds, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, Great Tits, nest boxes, organic gardening, wildlife

colours garden photography gardening shrubs wildlife

The Stuttering Start to Spring

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 15, 2013
12 Comments on The Stuttering Start to Spring

We have been getting signs that Spring may be on its way. Buds of Hawthorn and Elder have started to split open to allow the brightest of green leaves to squeeze their way out. Yesterday frogs left us a gift in the wildlife pond – a big pile of spawn. Seeing the first spawn this late in the year is unusual as we normally find some in mid-February.

Last night the temperature dropped to minus 6! The spawn was frozen into the icy surface of the pond and fluffy snow flakes littered the surface.

The Hellebores that we have been enjoying so much over the last few weeks drooped losing all their structure. Stems bent over and lowered the flowers to the frozen ground. We know they will burst back when temperatures again rise above freezing and perhaps assisted by a little sunshine.

Happily a few plants in the garden have responded more positively to the fall in temperature. The foliage of Hebe “Red Edge” is always colourful but in this spell of renewed cold it has taken on richer tints.

Tags foliage, foliage plants, frog spawn, frogs, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, hebes, hellebores, shrubs, wildlife

arboreta birds fruit and veg garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening grow your own hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS meadows ornamental trees and shrubs Shropshire South Shropshire village gardens

Holly Cottage – another garden visit with the HPS

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 22, 2013
8 Comments on Holly Cottage – another garden visit with the HPS

June 16th and we are visiting two gardens with fellow members of the Shropshire Hardy Plant Society. In my previous post I shared our morning visit to “Fairview” and now we move on to Holly Cottage just a few miles away for the afternoon. To get to the cottage we had to drive over a few fields dodging sheep and when we parked up the heavens opened and the temperature plummeted. Bravely we donned waterproofs – it was well worth it. The garden at Holly Cottage ran downhill from the cottage and within its two and a half acres formal and informal plantings of herbaceous plants mingled with mature trees, meadows, a pond and even a small stream.

Just as we were impressed by the veggie patch at Fairview in the morning, the fruit and veg garden at Holly Cottage impressed too. This veggie patch practised organic principles to produce quality harvests.

Part of following organic principles is to encourage wildlife to garden with you and here there were nest boxes and bird feeders in evidence as well as a meadow, a small arboretum featuring mostly native and wildlife attracting trees and shrubs. A comfy rustic bench was also positioned where we could appreciate it all.

We like to find original new ideas or twists on old favourites during our garden visits. At Holly Cottage we came across this wonderful example of high-rise living for plants.

As with any garden the plants are the stars and on a dull, wet cold day such as this these stars are needed even more. Holly Cottage’s plants did not let us down. They lifted our spirits out of the gloom.

Tags fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grown your own, meadows, organic gardening, shrubs, trees, wildlife

climbing plants colours garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening hardy perennials Land Art natural pest control ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture shrubs village gardens wildlife

A Cottage in Leicestershire

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 16, 2013
15 Comments on A Cottage in Leicestershire

Our son, Jamie and his fiancee, Sam have just bought their first home together, an old cottage in a small Leicestershire village and so we were looking forward to visiting them and having a good nose around and of course to explore their garden to see what promises it had in store for the coming seasons.

The village seemed a perfect, idyllic place to live, with a pub, a village shop, a primary school and lots of friendly neighbours. Homes have been built here over the centuries giving a huge range of styles – a potted history of domestic architecture. Jamie and Sam’s cottage was built about 300 years ago, but I should really have said two cottages as originally these were two tiny workers cottages. From a quick look at old census returns for the village the cottages were likely to have been home to stocking knitters, lace workers or agricultural labourers. There could be many hours of internet searching of historical sources ahead to enjoy.

It is a very welcoming cottage with a beautiful porch with a feature stain glass window alongside it. The front garden consists of a triangle of land just big enough for a Lilac to grow with a few small shrubs at its feet. Sadly the day after I took this photo the lovely old Lilac blew down in strong winds.

J and S are excited by the thought of what treats might emerge from the cottage garden to the back of the cottage. A walk around revealed some lovely secrets awaiting their season. The garden is a long plot, well stocked with plants to attract wildlife.

From the plants we could identify it should reveal itself as a true cottage garden planned with wildlife in mind. A small pond, a wildlife friendly hedge and a couple of log piles have also been included. A beautiful dry-stone wall provides shelter for a variety of creatures. We took along a bird table and nestbox to add to these and these were soon in place.

The perennials present include Asters, Aquilegias, Foxgloves, Sedum, Iris, Crocosmias, Hemerocalis and Aconitum, so there is a promise of lots of colour and lots of butterflies, bees and beneficial insects.

Of particular interest were the many clumps of Arum Lilies, a family I know little about. We grow Arum italicum marmoratum which was present as several clumps, but I think there were others there with different foliage markings and colours. The main reason to grow these is for their marbled leaf markings.

One task J and S set us was to identify “the sticks”, their non-gardening word for shrubs and trees without leaves! The biggest and most impressive “stick” proved to be a very old apple tree over which scrambles an equally old rambling rose. These will both take a lot of remedial pruning but will prove to be wonderful features. A mature Buddleja, Spiraeas, Hydrangeas and a small cherry will provide colourful flowers in the future, and the Buddleja will bring in both scent and butterflies for their enjoyment.

The large terrace is separated from the garden itself by a low wall of mature bricks which proved to be a handy place to display interesting objects discovered as we cut down the old growth of perennials and tidied up the borders. The little sculpture of stacked sea-worm bricks is one I made years ago.

Three found items, a chair, a terra cotta bowl and a rusty pruning saw blade now adorn the shed.

Two days with J and S wandering around and discovering their new garden and hatching plans for the future, inspired ideas for a mini-meadow of wildflowers, a much bigger pond, a prairie garden and some trained fruit. They have years of fun to come!

Tags apples, buddleia, foliage, foliage plants, garden wildlife, gardening, Leicestershire, outdoor sculpture, shrubs, winter gardens

allotments birds community gardening garden photography garden wildlife gardening grow your own ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs photography shrubs trees wildlife winter gardens

Allotments under Snow

Today we braved the snow and floods up at our allotment site and went for a walk around to look at what turned out to be a very different world to the one we usually see. The pictures illustrate just how long it may be before we can get any gardening done up there. We still have root crops in the ground – in December it was too wet to get on the soil and now it is all under the white stuff.

Here is the actual green bench that inspires the name of my blog.

The scarecrows remain on duty whatever the weather and shrug off the snow and ice.

Wheelbarrows wait patiently.

The plots have a forlorn look but beneath the ice and snow the soil is waiting – waiting for a little more light, more heat from the sun and plenty of evaporation to lessen the moisture content.

The Winter Garden is full of interest.

The contractors preparing our site extension in the adjoining field were toiling away in the snow, ice and waterlogged soil. They are putting in drainage and clearing out an old pond to create a wildlife pond for us all to enjoy. The ground they overturn presented birds with a rich feeding ground. Blackbirds, Redwings, Fieldfares, Jays, and Thrushes both Song and Thrush revelled in a fresh supply of worms and ground creatures.

Tags allotments, birds, community gardening, dogwoods, fruit and vegetable growing, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grasses, grown your own, scarecrows, shrubs, snow, snowmen, trees, winter, winter gardens

bird watching birds garden wildlife wildlife

Garden Birds in the Snow

Today the snow came! We had hoped for a snow-free winter but the weather defied us. We woke at 7:00 expecting a covering but we were gladdened to see not an iota of white stuff. Half an hour later it started and by mid-morning we were under a 3 inch layer.

The birds arrived in force queueing up at each feeding post. A flock of Fieldfare and Redwing dropped in as did the first Siskins of the winter.

The garden was alive with Titmice, Blue, Great, Coal and Long Tailed and mixed flocks of finches, Green, Gold and Chaffinch. The Great Spotted Woodpeckers made regular forays from the old oak in the paddock onto our peanut feeders.

The picture below was the best of a bad bunch – I have decided that trying to take a photo of a Blue Tit within the fine filigree of Birch branches is not easy!

Blackbirds were far more amenable as they sat for longer and seemed to ignore this very amateur cameraman.

The only time the garden was quiet today was just after the flypast of a Sparrowhawk, but hunger soon overcame fear. Back they all came.

It is essential that we all feed the birds throughout the year but even more so in the winter and provide fresh water. The birds benefit but so do our gardens as we help maintain the balance of nature. Some of the birds who use our feeding stations are also part of our balanced organic pest control.